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PARAGUAYAN AND ARGENTINE BIBLIOGRAPHY¹⁴

[Bibliographica, vol. i., pt. 3, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co.]

The great merit of the Spanish and Portuguese bibliographers has in some degree missed recognition from the exceptional character of their themes. They have done little for general bibliography or the literary history of other nations, but, observant of the German precept, have "swept before their own doors" in the most thorough manner. Nicolas Antonio and Barbosa Machado have given magnificent examples of what may be termed bio-bibliography, where not only the literary productiveness, but the life of the author is the subject of investigation. There are few books of the class to which resort can be made with so fair a prospect of being able to find exactly what is required. The dimensions of modern literature forbid the hope of such works being ever seen again. Bibliography and biography must henceforth walk apart, or at most, as in our own Dictionary of National Biography, one must sink into a mere appendage to the other. Works like Antonio's or Machado's belong to the extinct mammoths of the past: yet more modern Spanish and Portuguese bibliographers have displayed equal diligence in more restricted fields. It would be difficult to praise too highly the research of a Mendez, a Salva, or an Icazbalceta, who, like their predecessors, manage to convey the impression of having exhausted their subjects. To these is now to be added Señor Jose Toribio Medina, a Chilian gentleman who has taken an entire continent for his province. In 1891 he produced his bibliography of Chilian literature to 1810, the era of South American independence. In 1892 the assistance of the Museo de la Plata, stimulated by the approaching congress at Huelva in commemoration of the discovery of America, enabled him to publish his bibliography of the Argentine Republic, including Paraguay and Uruguay, on a scale, and with a wealth of illustration, to ensure the book, if not the author, a foremost place amongst bibliographical mammoths, and to suggest that it might be used as collateral security for a new Argentine loan, could such things be. Compared with the tiny but serviceable lists of early South American books which Señor Medina has so frequently published in limited editions, his present volume is as the Genie outside the vase to the Genie within, and it must be the earnest hope of all interested in bibliographical research, and especially of all those who from personal acquaintance have learned to appreciate his indefatigable patriotism and single-minded earnestness, that the step now taken in advance may not be retraced, but that he may find encouragement to produce the still more important bibliography of Peru, now nearly ready for the press, with equal completeness, if not on a scale equally magnificent. When this has been effected, Señor Medina will be at no loss for more worlds to conquer. "We shall follow up the subject," he says, "with the history of printing in the Captain-Generalship of Quito, in Bogota, Havana, Guatemala, and, please Heaven, in the Viceroyalty of Mexico, the cradle of the typographic art in America. Finally, we shall publish the general history of printing in the old Spanish colonies, for which we shall be able to employ a great number of documents hitherto entirely unknown."

The history of South American typography is as interesting in a bibliographical, as it is barren in a literary point of view. The hand-list of the productions of the Lima Press in colonial days, already published by Señor Medina, would alone be a sufficient indictment of Spanish rule, and a sufficient apology for the mistakes of the emancipated colonists. Apart from religious books published in the native languages, and the grammars and dictionaries associated with them, scarcely anything can be found indicative of intellectual life, or imparting anything that the citizen needs to know. Public ceremonies, bull-fights, legends of saints, theses in scholastic philosophy, make up the dreary catalogue, and show how a lively and gifted people were systematically condemned, in so far as their rulers' power extended, to frivolity, superstition and ignorance. But if South America was for nearly three centuries a desert for literature, it was and is a happy hunting-ground for bibliography. The limited interest and limited circulation of such books as were produced conspired to make them rare; the best religious and philological works in Indian languages were commonly worn out or mutilated by constant use; local difficulties occasioned the production of others under peculiar and even romantic circumstances; such as the half-dozen perhaps printed, certainly published at Juli, twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea; or those rude but deeply interesting Paraguayan books which form the subject of Señor Medina's first chapter.¹⁵

The extreme difficulty of introducing any kind of literature into South America under the Spanish régime, cannot be better illustrated than by the history of the first Paraguayan book, now extant in a single copy in the library of Señor Trelles, a citizen of the Argentine Republic. First of all, about 1693, Father Jose Serrano translates Father Nieremberg's treatise "on the difference between things temporal and things eternal," into Guarani, the vernacular of the Paraguay Indians. Father Tirso Gonzalez, the head of the mission, thinks it well that this translation and another of Ribadeneira's "Flos Sanctorum," also made by Father Serrano, should be printed nearer home than at Lima, the only city in the vast South American continent then in possession of a printing-press. Though they are religious works of the most edifying character, it is necessary to memorialise the Council of the Indies. Father Gonzalez does not make up his mind to this step until December 1699. At length, however, he writes to Spain, obtains permission, and, by the beginning of 1703, types have been cast and the numerous engravings in the Antwerp edition of Nieremberg's treatise copied by the native Indians, whose extraordinary imitative talent is celebrated by Father Labbe, who visited La Plata about this time. "I have seen," he says, "beautiful pictures executed by them, books very correctly printed by them, organs and all kinds of musical instruments. They make pocket timepieces, draw plans, engrave maps, &c."¹⁶ One thing, however, they could not do, found types of proper hardness, inasmuch as the requisite metal for alloy did not exist. The consequent blurred appearance of the impression has led high authorities to assert that the types were made of hard wood, which would not a priori have appeared improbable. The late lamented Mr. Talbot Reed, however, assured the present writer that this could not have been the case; and Señor Medina proves by an official letter, written in 1784, more than twenty years after the ruin of the missions, that the material was tin. The types which existed at that period have disappeared, the remains of the printing-press are still extant in the La Plata Museum. Señor Medina thinks that they ought to be restored: and so do we, provided only that enough remains to distinguish restoration from re-creation.

The book, announced as about to be printed in January 1703, eventually made its appearance in 1705; with the licenses of the Viceroy of Peru, the Dean of Asuncion, and the acting provincial of the Jesuits, two recommendations by divines, and two dedications by Father Serrano himself, the first to the Holy Spirit, who is addressed as "Your Majesty"; the second to Father Gonzalez. The place of imprint is given as "en las Doctrinas," probably the mission station of Santa Maria la Mayor. We must refer our readers to Señor Medina's volume for the interesting and minute bibliographical particulars it affords, as well as for the facsimiles of the original engravings, a remarkable episode in the history of the art, and only made accessible through Señor Medina's instrumentality, since the original exists in but a single copy.

The reader will have observed Father Labbe's statement that he has seen books printed by the Indians. At least one other book, therefore, should have been executed by them between 1705 and 1710, and Father Serrano undoubtedly intended to publish his Guarani version of Ribadeneira's "Flos Sanctorum." If he did, no trace of the publication exists at present, nor is any further record of typography in Paraguay found until 1721, when a little liturgical manual for the use of missionaries, entirely in Guarani, with the exception of the first fifteen leaves, was printed at the mission station of Loreto. In 1722 and 1724 the "Vocabulario de la Lengua Guarani" and the "Arte de la Lengua Guarani," both by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, a Peruvian missionary of the seventeenth century, were reprinted from the original Spanish editions, with copious additions, those to the latter work certainly, those to the former probably, by Paulo Restivo. Both these books were printed at Santa Maria la Mayor, as also was the catechism of Nicolas Yapuguai, a native Paraguayan, in 1724. His "Sermones y Exemplos" appeared at San Francisco Xavier in 1727, and in the same year and at the same place was printed the letter of the unfortunate ex-governor Joseph Antequera y Castro, indited in his prison at Lima, to his adversary the Bishop of Paraguay, who apparently only allowed it to be printed that he might add a more prolix reply. From this time until after the overthrow of Spanish authority, all trace of a press in Paraguay disappears. It should be added that the seven books recorded are undoubtedly productions of one and the same press, although the place of imprint is frequently varied. One curiosity remains to be mentioned, a fragment of a Guarani catechism and syllabary, consisting of two wooden leaves paginated 4 and 13, on which characters are cut in relief precisely as in Chinese stereotypic printing. It is to be supposed that they are older than the books printed with movable types. They are in the library of Señor Lamas, to whom they were presented by an English traveller.

Four out of these seven books are in the British Museum – the Vocabulario and Arte of Ruiz de Montoya, Yapuguai's Catechism, and the letter of Antequera y Castro. The first two were presented in 1818 by Mr. George Bellas Greenough, the founder of the Geological Society. The Catechism was purchased in 1889, and the letter in 1893. The latter is the only copy hitherto known, and is the only one of the seven books of which some portion is not facsimiled by Señor Medina.

Printing had died out in Paraguay before its introduction into any other portion of the great La Plata region. It revived under Jesuit auspices at Cordova, where towards the end of the seventeenth century a college had been founded by Duarte y Quiros, which had become the chief educational institution of the country. By 1765 it had attained sufficient consequence to become sensible of the inconvenience of being unable to print its theses and other academical documents, which, so wretched was the provision then made for the intellectual needs of the Spanish colonies, could only be done at Lima, more than a thousand miles off on the other side of the Andes. The Viceroy of Peru was accordingly appealed to, and permission obtained, fenced with all imaginable precautions and restrictions. No time was lost in printing five panegyrical orations upon the pious founder Duarte y Quiros, probably by Father Peramas, which appeared in 1766. Two, or possibly three, minor publications, now entirely lost, had followed, when the existence of the press was abruptly terminated by the suppression of the Jesuits, and Cordova never saw another until after the independence. The types, however, not tin like the Paraguayan, but imported from Spain and cast secundum artem, were preserved in the college, and in 1780 were transferred to Buenos Ayres, where it had been resolved to introduce typography; not for its own sake, but as a means of raising money towards the support of a foundling hospital, endowed with the proceeds of the printing-press. Official and ecclesiastical patronage were not wanting; by the end of 1781 twenty-seven publications of various descriptions, mostly of course on a very small scale, had issued from the Buenos Ayres press. The first of any kind was a proclamation relating to the militia, facsimiled by Señor Medina; the first deserving the character of a book was, as in British North America, an almanac. The most interesting from their subject were pastoral letters by two bishops on the overthrow of the rebel cacique Tupac Amaru in Peru. The press continued to thrive, and in 1789 it was necessary to procure a new fount of type from Spain. The total number of publications known to the end of 1810 is 851 – a very large proportion of which, however, are merely fly-sheets. Some, nevertheless, are of exceptional interest, such as the translation of Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life," perhaps the first translation of an English book ever published in Spanish America, and the numerous broadsides attesting the impression at first produced in the colonies by Napoleon's invasion of the mother country. Eight proclamations by General Beresford during the brief occupation of the city by the British forces in 1806 are of especial interest to Englishmen. In one Beresford endeavours to conciliate the good-will of the inhabitants by promising deliverance from the financial oppression of the Spanish colonial system. They soon afterwards took the matter into their own hands: the publications for the last months over which Señor Medina's labours extend are chiefly proclamations by the Junta and similar revolutionary documents. Among them, duly facsimiled by Señor Medina, is the proclamation of the Junta, with the date of May 23, 1810, announcing the virtual deposition of the Viceroy, the first document of Buenos Ayrean independence, although the authority of Ferdinand the Seventh is still acknowledged in name, and the autonomy of the country was not proclaimed until 1816. Another curiosity, also facsimiled, is a proclamation in Spanish and Quichua, "from the most persecuted American," Iturri Patiño, to the inhabitants of Cochabamba in Upper Peru, more than a thousand miles from Buenos Ayres, exhorting them to welcome their deliverers. The interest is greatly enhanced by Señor Medina's industry in tracing out other works of the writers, published in other parts of South America.

The story of the introduction, expulsion, and revival of printing in Monte Video is one of the most curious – we might almost say dramatic – episodes in the history of the art. The city, which had existed nearly two hundred years without any more typographical implement than a stamping machine, was taken by an English expedition in February 1807. With the invaders came an enterprising Briton whose name is unfortunately not recorded, but who, before leaving England, had invested in a printing-press and types, and brought them with him with the view of earning an honest penny by dissipating South American darkness. He received every encouragement from the English military and naval authorities, but most probably had to train native compositors, who could not be extemporised in a city destitute of a printing-press. At all events he did not get to work till May, when the first production of his press was a proclamation, from which it appears that General Whitelock, whose expedition was to end so disastrously, at the time considered himself entitled to exercise authority over the whole of South America. And whereas it has been asserted that wherever an Englishman goes the first institution he creates is a public-house, be it noted that the next official announcement imposes a swinging tax upon the public-houses already existing, without any loophole for local option. On May 23, an eventful date in Argentine history, appeared the first numbers of The Southern Star, La Estrella de Sur, a journal in English and Spanish, conducted by Adjutant-General Bradford, proudly displaying the lion and the unicorn, and addressing the native population as "fellow-subjects," a description softened in the Spanish version into amigos. The consternation produced by this portent at Buenos Ayres was excessive. "The enemies of our holy religion, of our king, and of the weal of mankind," declared the Audiencia, "have chosen the printing-press as their most effectual weapon. They are diffusing papers full of the most detestable ideas, even to the pitch of asserting that their infamous and abominable religion differs very little from ours." The misfortunes of the British arms, however, extinguished The Southern Star after the third number, and the publisher, whose property in his press and types was guaranteed by the capitulation, was glad to sell them to the Buenos Ayres Foundling Hospital for five thousand pesos, which, whether in the spirit of speculation or by reason of the deficiency of the circulating medium so unhappily chronic in those regions, he received in cascarilla at the rate of twelve reals a pound. The object of the authorities was no doubt to get the press and its appurtenances away from Monte Video. Within three short years Buenos Ayres became the focus of revolution, while Monte Video was still precariously loyal. The Princess Regent and her advisers, then established at Rio de Janeiro, finding that the revolutionists were flooding the country with their pamphlets, invoked the power they had striven to suppress, and deeming to cast out Satan by Beelzebub, shipped a quantity of Brazilian type, very bad, to judge by Señor Medina's facsimile, to Monte Video, where, for the short remaining period comprehended in Señor Medina's work, it was employed in producing Government manifestos and an official journal; edited for a time by Father Cirilo de Alameda, of whom it is recorded that he never wrote anything tolerable except a defence of the Spanish constitution, and that this was adapted from a panegyric on the Virgin.

This slight notice can give but a very imperfect idea of the varied interest and splendid execution of Señor Medina's volume, a work as creditable to the country which has produced it for the excellence of the typography and the beauty of the numerous facsimiles, as to the author for the extent and accuracy of his research, and the curious and interesting particulars, biographical as well as bibliographical, which he brings to light on every page. Could the remainder of Spanish America be treated in a similar style, that much-neglected part of the world would rival, if not surpass, any European country in the external dignity of its bibliographical record. This may be too much to expect, but it is greatly to be hoped that Señor Medina will find means for giving to the world what is actually indispensable to the completion of his important task. He is a citizen of the most prosperous, progressive, and orderly state in South America. It would be to the honour of the rulers of Chili if, overlooking all political differences, they gave their distinguished fellow-citizen the means of associating the name of his country, as well as his own, with as meritorious an undertaking as ever appealed to the sympathy of an enlightened State.

THE EARLY ITALIAN BOOK TRADE

[Bibliographica, vol. i. pt. 3, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co.]

There are few inquiries more interesting than one into the character and tendencies of an epoch, as ascertained by their reflection in its literature. Such an investigation, if referring to modern times and extended beyond a single country, must generally be incomplete on account of the great mass of the materials, which defies any exhibition of the literary tendencies prevailing at any given period over the whole of Europe. In the first age of printing alone the number of books is not absolutely unmanageable, and their bibliographical interest has ensured their accurate description in catalogues. It would not be beyond the power of industry to make a digest of the incunabula of the fifteenth century, so far as to show the number of books printed in each country, their respective subjects, the frequency of reprints, the ratio of the various classes to each other, the proportion of Latin to vernacular books, and other particulars of this nature by which the intellectual currents of the age might be mapped out.

The present essay is to be regarded as no more than a very imperfect indication of the feasibility of such an undertaking. Observations, sufficiently desultory, on the general character of the literature published in Italy, from the introduction of printing into the country to the end of the century, have suggested some remarks on the kind of books which the early Italian printers found it profitable to produce, and some inferences respecting the taste of the day, and the classes which would be reached by the printing-press. To afford a really satisfactory ground-work for such an inquiry, all known publications should be enumerated (although the briefest titles would serve), and tabulated according to their subjects. Deductions regarding the intellectual aspects of the time might then be made with some confidence, and the apparently dry and unpromising ground-work would admit of rich illustration from the stores of contemporary literary history. Any such fulness of treatment is, of course, as incompatible with the space available in Bibliographica as with the time at the disposal of the writer. Enough, it is hoped, will have been done to show how interesting a detailed analysis of the subject might be made. The Roman and Venetian presses have been chiefly dwelt upon, inasmuch as these two cities, the first in Italy to possess printing-presses, also served to test the opposite systems of reliance upon patronage in high quarters, or upon the free life of a busy and prosperous community. The result is instructive, and has been confirmed by every similar experiment in later times.

In examining the literature of the age, as represented by the contemporary productions of the press, we are particularly impressed by its utilitarian, and, as a corollary, its essentially popular character. We do not employ this latter term as indicative of a relation between the printers and the mass of the people, who at that period were generally unable to read, but between the printers and their limited public. In our times a considerable proportion of the current literature of the day is produced without any reference to the needs and tastes of the reading public. The author knows that he will not be read, but it nevertheless suits him to put his opinions, his experiences, or his skill in composition upon record; for the gratification of his self-esteem, it may be, or the expression of his emotions, or as a document for future reference, or as an act of duty, or for the pleasure of friends, or for any one or more of these and many other conceivable reasons. Were it not for the safety-valve afforded by the periodical press, the number of books thus existing for the author's individual sake would be very much more considerable. Hardly anything of this is to be observed in the early ages of publishing. Scarcely a book is to be found for which a public might not be reasonably expected, and which, therefore, would not be produced without the expectation of profit. We know that this expectation was not always realised from Sweynheym and Pannartz's petition to Pope Sixtus IV., that he would indemnify them by some public appointment for the loss of capital sunk in their unsold publications, but the books were such as promised to command a sale, and the reason of their failure was probably the competition of other Italian presses. They were principally classical authors or Fathers of the Church, and it may be that exigencies of Papal patronage led Sweynheym and his partner to produce more of the latter class than was prudent on strictly commercial grounds. If so, the case was quite exceptional, and does not invalidate the general proposition that the Italian printers of the Renaissance looked entirely, and in the main intelligently, to the needs of their public. It is thus easy to discover the character of this constituency, and to estimate its requirements.

For long after the invention of printing the books produced consist mainly of four classes: – (1) Classical, (2) Grammatical, (3) Theological, (4) Legal. The immense proportion of these in comparison with other subjects demonstrates that the great majority of readers belonged to the professional classes – teachers, or at least students at the universities, divines, and practitioners of civil or canon law. Had a leisured and cultured class existed, as in our times, we should have seen more modern history and biography, more essays and facetiæ, more vernacular poetry and fiction – all departments very slenderly represented in the fifteenth century. Men evidently read for practical ends, and invested their money in the expectation of a substantial rather than an intellectual return. The class that now reads principally for amusement, did not in that age read at all; but if it had, books could not then be produced at the cheap rate required to ensure an extensive circulation. If such books are costly, they must at all events be solid, to give the purchaser an apparent return for his money; or the expense must be distributed over a wide area by the agency of circulating libraries, an institution which implies a numerous reading public. Hence, a fact honourable to Renaissance literature, it includes hardly anything that can be called trash. Copious in the number of its publications, it is disappointingly meagre in their themes; many branches of human activity hardly exist for it, but, at all events, almost every one of its publications was produced in response to a real need. Most of them have inevitably become obsolete, few have ever been, or will be, utterly valueless.

The drawback to the generally sterling character of the early Renaissance printing was want of enterprise on the part of the printers, who were also the publishers. At the present day culture is greatly promoted by the ambitious and competitive spirit of publishers, who look far and wide for subjects likely to touch sympathetic chords in the breast of the public, are always ready to listen to new ideas, to which they frequently accord generous encouragement, compete among themselves for promising writers, and are continually devising new schemes to attract patronage by elegance, cheapness, artistic decoration, or the supply of some want which the public has not yet found out for itself. Very little of this is to be discovered in the fifteenth century. Publishers seldom cared to transgress the safe ordinary round of classics, divinity, and law. Occasionally there are symptoms of alertness to the events of the day: thus, as soon as Cardinal Rovere becomes Pope, his treatises on the Redemption and the perpetual virginity of Mary are printed at Rome; and when the Jews are accused of murdering a Christian boy, circumstantial accounts of the tragedy appear in different parts of Europe. But, notwithstanding the intellectual curiosity of the age, it would seem to have been a very unpromising one for the literary manifestation of original genius of any kind. Works of contemporary authors, other than of a purely utilitarian character, are very rare. One of the most remarkable exceptions is the publication at Naples in 1476 of the "Novellini" of Masuccio, a book whose scandalous character would be sure to obtain it readers. Towards the end of the century, works by living authors of eminence became more frequent, but even then they are most commonly those of men like Sanazzaro, influential in courts, and enjoying literary distinction long before they went to press. One of the press's most important functions, the encouragement of unknown ability, was hardly performed at all in that age, and the principal reason was that the printers, though sometimes of classical acquirements, were either too exclusively commercial in their views or too limited in their resources to promote literary activity outside of the beaten track. Our own Caxton appears a model of intelligent adaptation to the tastes of his public, but he never finds an author or exerts himself to give superior finish or elegance to a book. It cannot but be thought that if Italy had in the fifteenth century possessed a publisher of enterprising spirit and ample means, a powerful impulse might have been imparted to Italian vernacular literature. Such a person, indeed, would have perceived that the public for such a literature, apart from its few classical examples, did not then exist, but he would have deemed that the multitude of intelligent men who could not read Latin would read Italian, if Italian were put before them. Instead of hiring editors he would have hired authors, and his enterprise might have been attended by momentous consequences.

Another token of the lack of a far-seeing speculative spirit is the extraordinary period which elapsed before an Italian printer ventured upon the publication of a Greek book. The interest in Greek literature must have been very general, but instructors were probably scarce, and few Italians had taken the trouble to learn it. The educational value of the language, apart from the contents of the books composed in it, was utterly unsurmised, and the reader was fully satisfied if he could obtain a faithful Latin translation, which in the majority of cases was not yet to be had. Had printed Greek texts been placed in the way of readers, a vast impulse would have been given to the study of the language, and a publisher of genius, labouring to create the taste he did not find, might have greatly accelerated the course of European culture. Greek grammar, even, awaited the typographer until 1476, and Greek literature for some years longer. No originality was infused into the business of publishing until the advent of Aldus, almost as much the father of modern bookselling as Gutenberg is the father of printing.